by JD Nixon
“Next one won’t be a warning,” Heller said to Beyrer, and I’d never heard his voice so detached and cold before. “Face down, hands behind your back.” Beyrer was slow to obey, so Heller shot him in the shoulder without a hint of hesitation. I flinched in the back seat, almost too scared to breathe. Farrell tightened his hold around me. “Next one’s in your head.”
Beyrer obeyed quickly then, animal whimpers of pain escaping him. Clive trussed him tightly, while Heller covered him with his gun. The two men worked efficiently and silently together, which only made me wonder if they’d ‘taken care of’ these sorts of problems so many times before that it rendered communication between them unnecessary.
“You’re a stupid man, Beyrer,” Heller spoke with contempt, kicking him violently in the ribs a couple of times. “I warned you what would happen if you came near Matilda. All you had to do was walk away. I gave you that chance. I treated you with respect because of your service to me, but now you’ve chosen to disrespect me.”
“Please Heller, no! There’s no disrespect to you. I wanted to teach her how to behave. I did it for you!” Beyrer begged, his voice muffled in the ground. “I wanted to help you. She’s a slut. She needs to learn respect.”
“Put him in the back,” Heller ordered. With no expression at all, Clive hauled Beyrer roughly to his feet and frogmarched him to the back of the Mercedes. Beyrer pleaded for mercy, tears and snot running down his face, blood soaking his shirt. Clive threw him in the back and slammed the door. He hammered on the glass between the back and the rear seat with his head, crying out for Heller to listen to him. I felt ill, shaking in fear myself. I didn’t know what was going to happen to Beyrer but I knew it wasn’t going to be friendly.
Heller came over to me and gently took my arms, examining them. Then he checked on the ugly, rapidly bruising welt across my neck.
“Nothing’s broken. It hurts though, doesn’t it?” he said with such tenderness that my mind couldn’t process how he’d switched so quickly from wintry rage to warm caring.
I shrank away from him, nodding, not able to stop myself shaking. I was aware of nothing except Heller leaning over me and Beyrer banging and screaming in the back. My breaths came in gasping shallow gulps. Bitter bile rose in my throat and for a terrible moment I thought I’d throw up on myself. I didn’t want to be in this 4WD. I didn’t want to be in this situation. I didn’t want to know what was going to happen to the man in the back. I wanted to be at home again with Mum and Dad, tucked up safely in my bed, a loved and carefree little girl happily dreaming of fairies and beautiful unicorns.
Heller took in all of these reactions with thoughtful silence, gently cupped the back of my neck with his hand and kissed me on the forehead. “It will be all right, my sweet. Nothing for you to worry about.”
I managed to speak, even though every muscle in my body felt too tight to move. “Trent. He’s badly injured. He’s lying on the ground near the car. We need an ambulance.”
“Farrell, you stay here with Matilda and escort the two of them to hospital. Clive and I have some business to attend to.” And with that, he kicked us out of the 4WD and they sped off into the night, his prisoner trapped in the back.
Poor Trent had come around, and lay still, blinking groggily, the blood on his face and clothes a congealing mess. I sat on the road next to him holding his hand, waiting for the ambulance that Farrell had called to arrive.
“Hugh, what will Heller and Clive do to him?” I asked in a low, flat voice, not really wanting to hear the answer.
Farrell shrugged. “Depends what Heller threatened to do to him if he came near you. You don’t want to know, Chalmers. Put it out of your mind. It’s Heller’s business now, not yours.”
I tried to concentrate on comforting Trent, but couldn’t banish the image of Beyrer’s face pressed up against the back window of the Mercedes as it screeched away, silently screaming for help, banging with utter futility. I shouldn’t feel sorry for him. He was a dangerously violent man, but he was also a human being. I wouldn’t wish what he was about to suffer on anyone. The bile rose in my throat again and I fought to keep it down.
The ambulance arrived and it was the same paramedics yet again.
“Are you two the only paramedics in the whole city?” I asked when they approached us.
“Feels like it sometimes. God, what a night. Must be a full moon or something. What have we got here? Shit! Trent Dawson! That’ll be all over the news in five minutes.”
They gave him some first aid, lifted him into the ambulance on a gurney, and threw me an icepack for my neck and arms. As Farrell and I had no transport, he called a taxi for us and we sat on the road, waiting quietly for it to arrive. I had nothing to say about what had just happened and he never spoke much on a good day. But he took the opportunity of being alone with me to hold me close and kiss my forehead. I let him because it was exactly what I needed right then – comfort and safety from someone I admired and trusted. In fact, I leaned against him.
He spoke and I felt the rumble of his voice through his chest. “This is the best moment I’ve had since –”
“Shh. Don’t even say it,” I warned.
He stroked my hair and I relaxed even further against him. “You and him?”
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess. Me and him.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.” I thought about his words for a moment but was saved from answering by the arrival of the taxi.
Before we climbed in to go to the hospital, Farrell locked Trent’s little car, but it was pointless. The broken windows gave easy access to any enterprising car booster and it would probably be stolen in less than an hour.
Hours later, I sat beside Trent’s bed in his private room at the hospital, my sore arms and neck tutted over, painkillers swallowed to help me reach that nirvana of being free of pain for a while. Trent looked terrible, one eye completely closed with swelling and heavily bruised, nose twice its size, his lips badly split and stitches in his eyebrow. Although bruised and battered, he’d been lucky not to fare worse after his vicious bashing. But emotionally, he was badly shaken and subdued. His phone didn’t stop ringing after reports of his assault hit the news. His network boss rang anxiously, checking that his star performer was still alive and able to continue working. Trent advised him through hurting lips, and with an understandable touch of acerbity, that he wouldn’t be on air for a while and that it might be a good time for him to take some extended leave.
Eventually though I was chased out of his room by a nurse who insisted that he had to sleep. I returned to the waiting room where I’d left Farrell an hour ago, to find Heller and Clive also there. They both wore neutral expressions, neither appearing upset nor distressed. Could they really be that cold-blooded?
“Ready to go home, Matilda?” Heller enquired and I nodded. It was a long silent trip home and I leaned against Farrell’s shoulder in the back seat, not caring about Heller’s watchful scrutiny in the rear view mirror. Farrell slid his arm around my shoulders, to make it more comfortable for me, and I fell asleep in that safe embrace, only waking when Heller stopped outside Farrell’s apartment block to drop him home.
Chapter 27
Back home ourselves, Heller led me to my flat where I insisted on having a shower although I was nearly asleep on my feet. I felt unclean and scrubbed myself down aggressively, thinking that a psychologist would probably make a big deal about that. Heller took a shower after me. I wasn’t sure what he felt the need to wash away. If anything.
“What did you do to him?” I murmured in the dark when we lay together in bed, glad I couldn’t see his glacial eyes.
“What I promised I’d do to him if he ever came near you again. He was given fair warning.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Do you really want to know?”
I gave it some consideration. “No.”
“He won’t bother you again.”
“Did you remove his tattoo when you fired him?”
<
br /> “Yes.”
“How?”
“Painfully.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
“You can’t do these things, Heller. It’s so wrong.”
“Some people don’t deserve to live.”
“It’s not up to you to decide something like that. Do you think that you deserve to live?”
A long stretch of silence. “No.”
That upset me. “How can you say that?”
“One day I’ll take on the wrong person. He’ll be stronger, younger, sharper than me and I’ll get what I deserve. It’s as simple as that, Matilda. It’s only a matter of time. It will be him or me. I’m just lucky that so far it’s been me.”
How could he talk like that?
“Do you think that I deserve to live?” I asked in a small voice, afraid of what he would say.
His answer startled me with its fierceness. “Yes!”
“Why me, but not you?”
“Because you’re sweet and beautiful. You bring happiness and light to people. You’re special.”
“I’m not special.”
“You’re important.”
I became agitated. “I’m not important! I’m just me! No better and no worse than any other human.”
He drew me to him roughly and held me close, so close I couldn’t move. His voice tickled my ear. “You are important. You’re the most important person in my life. I would do anything to keep you safe.” He brushed his lips against mine. “Anything.”
I thought of Felicia and Paulie, and now Beyrer. I asked the question I dreaded, “Have you killed for me?”
His response was anti-climactic. “Go to sleep, Matilda.” And I knew a brush-off when I heard one.
He fell asleep immediately, no guilty conscience or ethical dilemmas keeping him awake. I wished I could be so detached about the value of human life. I lay awake for ages, my mind churning with the terrible events of the evening, thinking about Will, Trent, Heller, Farrell, Clive and Beyrer.
My life was full of men, but I didn’t have anybody to call my own. I thought about Will’s wedding and wondered if I’d ever get married, remembering how I’d turned him down all that time ago. If I’d said yes, it would have been me in the wedding dress walking down the aisle to a new life with him, not Penny. Why couldn’t I have loved him more? I could have had a Happy Ever After, with mortgages and family gatherings, growing old together. Instead, my heart yearned for this beautiful, cold, dangerous, enigmatic man lying in bed next to me.
Why didn’t I fall for an accountant? An engineer? A carpenter? Someone ordinary? Someone normal?
Why this man? Was it something about him that was to blame?
Or was it something about me? Something I wasn’t ready to face about myself?
The tears I’d stifled all day suddenly flooded my eyes, rolling down my cheeks, dampening my pillow. I cried silently, not wanting to wake up Heller. I didn’t want to talk about the huge conflict in my heart I felt over loving him, but not knowing him or understanding him at all.
Heller stirred, his fingers gently touching the tears on my cheeks. “Tough day?”
“It was . . . rather stressful,” I snuffled.
“Come here.” And with that, he pulled me close to him, where I eventually sank into a dreamless sleep, my head resting on his chest.
At about three in the morning I woke, my arms and neck aching. I needed more painkillers, carefully easing myself out of bed so as not to wake Heller. Despite my encroaching pain, I stood for a moment looking down at his slumbering face. He slept deeply, everything about him relaxed. That was testament to his complete trust in me because I was sure he normally slept like a cat – one eye open and one ear pricked.
I reached out to stroke his spiky, but bed-rumpled, hair. His hand shot out to capture my wrist with unnecessary force.
I gasped. “Heller, you’re hurting me!”
He blinked calmly, but his voice showed a little edginess. “I’m sorry, my sweet. You should be more careful.”
“About caressing you?”
Our eyes locked together and we sent each other a hundred messages that neither of us was equipped to interpret.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Why are you up?”
“I needed more painkillers.”
“Go back to bed. I’ll get them for you.” And when he’d done that, we settled back in bed together.
He soon fell asleep again, but sleep eluded me. Restless and waiting for the painkillers to kick in, I slipped out of bed again and wandered around my dark flat, not needing any lights. I thought of Daniel and wondered how the party had gone. I walked across the hall to his door and rapped quietly, hoping he’d be up, freshly home after a great evening.
Nothing.
I knocked louder. A sleepy Niq opened the door, trying to peer at me through mostly-closed eyes.
“Sorry to wake you up, sweetie. Is Daniel home yet?”
Niq nodded his head and stumbled back to his bedroom, leaving the door open. He probably wouldn’t even remember answering it in the morning. I closed the door, thinking that must be a good sign. Daniel was having such a great time that he didn’t want to come home.
Back in my flat, I recommenced my wandering, spending a minute at each window, staring out at the deserted streets and buildings the view offered. When I reached the window that showcased the entire concreted front yard of the Warehouse, I paused. Someone was sitting on the low brick fence that delineated the Warehouse’s meagre front patch from the footpath.
It was Daniel.
The second I noticed his slumped shoulders and curved spine, I flew down the stairs to the entry.
“Daniel,” I said from the front door, not wanting to startle him.
He half-turned his head towards me in a listless motion that sent my alarms racing.
“Danny darling,” I said, approaching him. When I sat next to him on the fence, it was all I could do not to exclaim loudly in shock.
He’d been beaten. Badly beaten.
I placed my hand on his arm. He didn’t look at me, kept his gaze ahead of him, the blood on his face congealed into rivulets.
“Danny, wh-what happened?” I breathed, not able to speak normally. Tears gathered in my eyes already and I hadn’t even heard one word of his story.
“The party,” he said, his voice strangely unemotional, robotic. “Anton’s older brother and cousins turned up uninvited. Not really the tolerant types. Swaggering meatheads. They drank a lot and became obnoxious. After a while they started in on Anton, calling him a fag, a bum-boy, a limp-wrist, a pillow-biter, whatever. They pushed him around. He took it passively, as if he was used to it. So did everyone else. Nobody said anything. Nobody stuck up for him. And he had this . . . weird submissive smile on his face. Like he was trying to placate them by agreeing with them.”
He stopped and stared ahead, not blinking. I squeezed his arm.
“I just couldn’t stand by and watch, Tilly. Not after so many people did that to me when I was a kid.”
“Danny.”
“So I stepped up for him. Told them to leave Anton alone. That he was proud of who he was. That he wasn’t ashamed to be gay.”
Another silence.
“Danny?”
“Anton denied it. Told them I was lying. Told them he wasn’t gay but I was and that I’d come onto him. That I’d tried to . . . seduce him.”
“No.” My tears were trickling in earnest down my cheeks now. I could only imagine the end of this horrible story.
“That was smart of him. It diverted their attention from him to me.” He stared ahead for a while and then sighed sadly. “Nobody stepped up for me. In fact, they all scrammed. I was left alone with . . . I don’t know . . . eight, nine guys. All wanting a piece of the deviant who’d attacked their little punchbag, Anton.”
He was quiet for so long, I thought he couldn’t continue. I prompted him. “Daniel, what happened?”
; “They all took a piece of me, what else? Heller taught me to defend myself, but not against so many men. They beat the shit out of me.”
“Let’s go get them.” I could not believe those words tripped out of my mouth, but I was angry. Burning with anger for Daniel, for this beautiful, vulnerable, sensitive man who’d never hurt a soul in his life. A man I loved so much.
“As they punched me and kicked me, they reminded me just how ugly I am. What a creep I am. That nobody would ever want me to touch them. That Anton had only brought me along to the party for a laugh. That it had been bring-along-a-freak-night.” He shrugged a careless shoulder. “After the first five minutes of pummelling, I found it hard to disagree with them.”
“No, Danny. None of that is true.”
He stood up, wincing as he did. “I’m so tired. I need to rest. For a long time.”
There was something about his tone that worried me. “Come to my place. You can stay with me tonight.”
His crooked smile was sad and bloodied. “I’ll be fine.” He cupped my cheek. “You’ve always been a good friend, Tilly. I love you.” And he leaned towards me to press his busted lips on my cheek.
And he sprinted inside.
“Daniel!” I screamed. “What are you doing?”
I chased after him. He bolted up the stairs, not stopping anywhere. At the fourth floor, where our flats were located, he didn’t pause but kept going. I detoured for one second to bang on my flat door, yelling, “Heller! The rooftop!” I continued upstairs.
When I reached the rooftop, chest heaving, Daniel was climbing onto the brick wall surrounding our leisure space.
“No!” I shouted and lunged towards him, wrapping my arms around the top of his legs, furiously pulling him backwards off the edge. We landed in a tangled heap on the floor.
He fought me furiously. “Let me go. I can’t do this any more.”
“No, Daniel. I’ll never let you go.”
The strain of holding him was killing me, but I meant what I’d said. I’d never let him go.